The Population Bomb...Defused; R. C. Kirkwood

"The population bogey has been the rare sweet issue everyone could agree upon," says University of Maryland economist Julian Simon, yet a more mythical bogeyman could hardly be found. Though the population controllers such as International Planned Parenthood, The Popula tion Institute, and the Population Crisis Commit tee have had the media's ear since World War II, thinking economists and demographers have de stroyed the theory that population growth in hibits economic growth. How? As the American R. Cort Kirkwood is an editorialist for The Washington Times. Enterprise Institute's Nicholas Eberstadt puts it: "That corpus of knowledge simply does not exist. So what you have is pseudoscience. Modern witchcraft." The ingredients in the population bombers' brew are as strange as those used in witchcraft: eye of newt, crushed bat wings,and whatever else it is they toss in the pot, except the population bombers mix a concoction of Malthusianism, so cialism, and economic globaloney that emerges from their kettle as an oracle of doom.

Says Sharon Camp of the Population Crisis Committee: "There are too many people trying to eke out a living at current technology.... We don't know what will happen to the natural re source base at a population level of 8, 9, 10, 14 billion." Without an increase in U.S. assistance for United Nations population programs, Nafis Sadik of the United Nations Population Fund warned, "we will continue to experience high population growth, high infant and child mortality,weakened economies, ineffective agriculture, divided soci eties and a poorer quality of life for women, chil dren and men." Barber Conable, president of the World Bank, said in a September 1988 address to the bank's Board of Governors: "The societies in which population is growing so fast must accept that many-perhaps most-of these new lives will be miserable, malnourished and brief. With today's population growth rates, badly needed improve ments in living standards cannot be achieved, public resources for necessary services are over stretched, and the environment is severely dam aged."

442 THE FREEMAN • NOVEMBER 1989 Wrote Loretta McLaughlin in .The Boston Globe, "It is the pressure of the world's burgeon ing population-more than any other single force-that fuels inflation and economic reces sion. All nations must compete harder for dwin dling supplies of the earth's resources; worldwide, more workers must compete for proportionately fewer jobs." In the same article she quoted Conable's pre decessor, Robert McNamara, who best crystal lized the population bombers' mantra: "The pop ulation problem must be faced up to for what it is-the greatest single obstacle to the economic and social advancement of peoples in the devel oping world. It is the population explosion, more than anything else, which by holding back the ad vancement of the poor, is blowing apart the rich and poor and widening the already dangerous gap between them." Is PopulationGrowththe Culprit? It would be truly sad if all these things were true, but they aren't. All the available data sug gest that population growth has nothing to do with economic growth, infant mortality, or any of the other ugly conditions in which much of the world's population lives, especially the Third World.

For example, population planners say too many people will "deplete our limited quantities of food, water and fuel" and other nonrenewable resources. Yet the prices of most commodities (except fuel, thanks to government energy poli cies and the OPEC cartel), are gradually falling in real terms. If prices are a measure of scarcity, then the world's increasing population is hardly a threat. Population growth statistics really tell ob servers only one thing: there are more people to day than there were yesterday. Most of the dire predictions are about Africa and Latin America, where huge populations and mass starvation seem to go hand in hand~ Ac cording to The Population Institute, "There is no simple explanation for why Africa's economic de velopment has been stunted and why Africans to day remain so grievously poor. Lack of capital and highly skilled personnel is a factor. . . . ongo ing civil strife. . . . staggering external debts....

colonial exploitation. . . . degradation of . . . its natural resource base.... Somewhere in the mix of these factors is the wellspring of Africa's woes." But the real "wellspring of the continent's woes" is never discussed. Warning that Ethiopia's population of 49 mil lion will double in 23 years, the Institute reports, "The Ethiopian government acknowledges that the country's three percent population growth rate is imperiling its people and their develop ment hopes.... There is clearly no way Ethiopia could support that many people. Ethiopia has only two choices:undertake far more vigorous ef forts to extend family planning or face even larg er-scalesuffering in the near future." But overpopulation is hardly Ethiopia's prob lem. The Institute and its ideological kin simply ignore Ethiopia's brutal collectivization of agri culture, a throwback to the days of Stalin and the Ukrainian famine even the Soviets have advised the Mengistu regime to stop. The government has deliberately turned mild droughts into na tionwide famines and killed thousands of people in forced relocation programs to deprive anti government guerrillas of crucial rural support.

It is widely known that the Communist author ities use relief food as a lure, stationing supplies near pickup areas for the relocation program. The ultimate goal is to move 33 million people. Not surprisingly, The Washington Post reported in 1987, the per capita availability of grain had dropped 22 percent in 10 years, and even though state-owned farms were using 40 percent of all government expenditures, they contributed only four or five percent of total food production. Pri vate farmers-the few that there were-were generating 40 percent of the country's nearly nonexistent gross national product. Yet The Population Institute says Ethiopia needs more condoms and birth control pills: "Had Ethiopia launched a family planning pro gram in the mid-1960s and had that program been half as successful as many that were begun at that time, the number of births prevented would have been equal to the number of Ethiopi ans dependent upon food relief during the last famine." That's what you call pseudoscience.

The Institute is also worried about Ghana, "the second fastest growing [population] in west ern Africa" at 3.3 percent, but credits the Ghani an government with a hands-on approach to fam ily planning. Yet as Nicholas Eberstadt notes in the Winter THE POPULATION BOMB ... DEFUSED 443 1986 Wilson Quarterly,when Ghana was decolo nized and Kwarne Nkrumah took the reins of power, he systematically destroyed the economy with socialist interventions. He "forced the farm ers to sell their cocoa, the nation's chief export, at a fixed price to the government, which then sold it abroad at a profit. The proceeds were poured into Nkrumah's industrial development schemes. By the late 1970s... Ghana's small cocoa farmers were getting less than 40 percent of the world price for their crop-an effective tax of over 60 percent. Not surprisingly, Ghana's cocoa output and cocoa exports plummeted." Next Nkrumah "took aim at industry. Shortly after independence, he nationalized the nation's foreign-owned gold and diamond mines, cocoa processing plants, and other enterprises. Ghana's new infant industries were also state-owned. The result was inefficiency on a monumental scale.

According to one study, between 65 percent and 71 percent of Ghana's publicly owned factory ca pacity lay idle 10 years after independence .... By 1978,tax revenues paid less than 40 percent of the government's budget. Inflation spiraled, climbing by over 30 percent a year during the 1970s.... Black Africa's most promising former colony had become an economic disaster." But The Population Institute concludes, "where population growth is the fastest Africa-per capita food production is in the sharpest decline." SomeSurprisingComparisons The Institute's 1988 report on Africa ignores South Africa, which isn't surprising. Its popula tion, one of the continent's highest, has doubled since 1960, yet its per capita gross national prod uct in 1986 was $1,850. Ghana's and Ethiopia's populations have doubled as well, but their per capita GNP's are $390 and $120 respectively.Peo ple aren't Africa's problem, government policies are. Even South Africa's racialist apartheid sys tem hasn'tdone the damage Ethiopia'sCommu nist dictatorship has. In fact, if the government of South Africa ever dismantled the apartheid sys tem, allowing blacks even more economic free dom than they have now, the contrast would be even more dramatic ... and more embarrassing for the population bombers.

Africa's story is only a snapshot of a worldwide phenomenon. Comparing other countries in the second and first worlds yields similar results. As shown by the table on page 444, the differences between Taiwan, Singapore, and China, between North Korea and South Korea, and between East Germany and West Germany are equally startling, especially when population density is brought into the equation. Where China has enough room to put 285 people per square mile, its economy is a failure next to Taiwan's and Singapore's, whose people are packed in like sar dines, but whose economies have become known as two of Asia's four "dragons." (The other two being Hong Kong and South Korea.) These small islands also belie the myth that ur ban congestion in "Third World mega-cities" such as Mexico City and New Delhi is a threat to public health, education, and housing needs. Need we ask why South Korea, which is more than twice as crowded as North Korea, is doing twice as well economically? Population planners try to explain the differences by saying the suc cessful economies of Asia and Africa benefited from strong, government-backed family planning programs. But the population growth rates of the African countries, East and West Germany, the Koreas, and the Pacific rim countries were pretty much the same from 1960 to 1986. That leaves only one explanation for the differences, one the table doesn't show, one the population bombers don't like to discuss: China, Ethiopia, and the other economic failures are controlled by Com munist or socialist central planners, whereas Tai wan, Singapore, and the other economic engines of progress are largely free market economies.

As Julian Simon has written, "Population growth under an enterprise system poses less of a problem in the short run, and brings many more benefits in the long run, than under conditions of government planning of the economy." Adds Eberstadt, "the overall impact of population change on a society seems to depend on how the society deals with change of all kinds. Indeed, copingwith fluctuationsin populationis in many ways less demanding than dealing with the al most daily uncertainties of the harvest, or the ups and downs of the business cycle, or the vagaries of political life. Societies and governments that meet such challenges successfully as the little dragons did, are also likely to adapt well to popu lation change. Those that do not are likely to find Sources: The Heritage Foundation, The World Bank Annual Development Report 1988; Figures from 1986. canal at term, crushing its skull with a forceps or jamming a hypodermic needle filled with formaldehyde into the fontanelle, killing the child just moments before it enters the world. Others who make it past the doctor are often confronted by the nurse, and women have heard their child's first cries on beginning life only to see them snuffed out by that nurse, who is usually armed with what has become known as "the poison shot."

The justification for this mass murder? Ac cording to Chen Muhua, head of China's Family Planning Board, "Socialism should make it possi ble to regulate the reproduction of human beings so that population growth keeps in step with the growth of material production." Lest you think such exhortations are sui generis, look at the words of Friends of the Earth as published in·Progress As If Survival Mattered: "Americans should take the lead in adopting policies that will bring reduced population. Ulti mately, those policies may have to embrace coer cion by governments to curb breeding .... mere unofficial advocacy and purely voluntary compli ance are far from enough ... voluntarism guaran tees big families for the ignorant, the stupid, and the conscienceless,while it gradually reduces the proportion of people who, in conscience, limit the size of their families.... If the less stringent curbs on procreation fail, someday perhaps childbear ing will be deemed a punishable crime against so ciety unless the parents hold a government li cense. Or perhaps all potential parents will be 444 THE FREEMAN • NOVEMBER 1989 that a growing population 'naturally' causes se vere, costly and prolonged dislocations." (Wil son Quarterly, Winter 1986) In short, free soci eties adjust well to population increases, Commu nist societies do not.

The population bombers would be little more than harmless "do-gooders" if their ideas-that people cause inflation, that people consume too much food, that people are a drag on economic development-were not taken so seriously. But they are taken seriously, and the consequences have been disastrous, anti-natalist, even inhu man. Eberstadt cites a March 1986 Washington Post report from Kenya: "hundreds of [rural school] children ran screaming, some scrambling through windows, with the approach of an unfamiliar car: it was thought to contain population workers who would inject them with nonreversible con traceptives. The previous year starving Kenyans in drought -afflicted areas were reported to have refused relief shipments of U.S. corn on the ru mor that the corn had been laced with steril izants." (Foreign Aid and American Purpose, p.96) FamilyPlanningin China But the worst application of population control theory is that of the Communist Chinese govern ment, which has been cited by the U.S. House of Representatives for "crimes against humanity" in carrying out its one-family, one-child policy. In collecting 92 accounts from eyewitnesses, human rights activist Dr. Blake Kerr reported the ghastly results in The Washington Post (February 26, 1989): "In the autumn of 1987," two Tibetan monks told Kerr, "a Chinese birth-control team set up their tent next to our monastery in Amdo.

The· villagers were informed that all women had to report to the tent for abortions and steriliza tions or there would be grave consequences .... We saw many girls crying, heard their screams as they waited for their tum to go into the tent, and saw the growing pile of fetuses build outside the tent." Elsewhere in China, in pursuit of its U.N. backed family planning program, the results are the same: forced sterilization, abortion and out right infanticide. In many cases, doctors perform "abortions" as a child is moving through the birth East Germany West Germany North Korea South Korea China Taiwan Ghana South Africa Singapore Ethiopia Mozambique Population per square mile 399.0 634.5 448.0 1,095.5 285.0 1,385.6 142.9 68.4 11,608.4 92.2 45.8 GNP per capita $10,400 12,080 1,180 2,370 300 3,748 390 1,850 7,410 120 210 THE POPULATION BOMB ... DEFUSED 445 required to use contraceptive cheInicals, the gov ernments issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for child bearing."

The population bombers cannot imagine that an Ethiopian mother might love her children just as much the sterilization advocate living at the Watergate, that children provide a source of non material income they don't understand. For them, there are only "unwanted" pregnancies; as George Gilder put it, "mouths, not minds." No wonder they can make pseudoscientific state ments like, "500 million women want and need family planning but lack information, access or means to obtain it." In this view, people aren't producers, they're consumers. If such is the case then the effort to preserve man's finite resources must go beyond mere con traception and the legal elimination of "unwant ed" children by abortion. In allocating our sup posedly meager resources, judicious authorities would allow only the most learned, polished, and beautiful people to reproduce, for it is they who will use resources most expediently and they who need them most. After all, as devoted friends of the earth say, a system of "voluntarism" would empower the "stupid and ignorant" (the teeming masses of Latin America and Africa?) to waste our dwindling resources.

Effective population control logically demands that we control not only the number of people on earth, but the kind of people who live on it. And that is a recipe for tyranny. D IDEAS ON LIBERTY The UltimateWeapon T he development of the population control movement should not come as a surprise. For it is, in fact, the logical outcome as well as the • final gasp of the liberal Welfare State of today. Supposedly, the basic purpose of the Welfare State is to succor those who cannot take care of themselves, the poor, the elderly, the handicapped. But Garrett Hardin tells us that because of the inevitable "tragedy of the commons" in which the "freedom to breed" inexorably conflicts with equal rights to the common welfare, this Welfare State goal will bring ruin. So, to save its own skin, the Welfare State begins practicing not welfare but "wombfare," destroying rather than nurturing its young.

However, the "tragedy of the commons" is not a justification for popula tion control. It is rather a call for the elimination of the Welfare State. This is because the Welfare State is in the long run a way not of helping people but controlling them. And population control is the last desperate act and ulti mate weapon of a Welfare State whose lust for power and instinct for survival knows no political or moral limits. What population control boils down to is a blatant and brutal attempt to solve problems not by alleviating the conditions that cause them, but by elimi nating the people who have the problems. But the idea of eliminating prob lems by getting rid of people is not new. The concept has been with us always. -JAMES A. WEBER, Grow or Die!